May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.
-Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

..........................................................back in the fraternity house, "Normalcy is just the psychosis of the majority."

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” -Aldous Huxley

“Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.” -Ludwig von Miseschart via

On the morning of the first day of Jean Dussault's trial on charges of extortion, Joe Gillis used his "State House Viewpoint" column in the Boston Commoner to "put the matter in political perspective." In the last springtime of years when there was no statewide election in the offing and no overriding issue up for battle in the General Court on Beacon Hill, Joe Gillis did a lot of columns that assisted the readers of the Commoner in perceiving connections between politicians on the Hill and events that did not seem to have much to do with them or their careers. "Someday," Leo Rosen said when he read what Joe Gillis had to say about the implications of the trial of Jean Dussault, "old Joe is gonna reach so far to grab a column out of thin air that he's going to give himself retroactive case of spinal bifida." And when that day finally came, Leo Rosen did not mind admitting, he was going to take Joe's State House beat away from him.
-George V. Higgins, A Choice of Enemies

The island of Nantucket, Massachusetts -- high summer, the western end of the harbor crowded with boats, many tied up at the jetty. Among them was a scarlet-and-white sportfisherman named Dolphin. On the flying bridge, a gray-haired man sat at the wheel playing a clarinet, something plaintive and touching. He was around sixty, a white curling beard giving him the look of an old sailor.-Jack Higgins, Rain On The Dead

I am very much like the philosopher who was asked by a student, "Professor, it is said you believe that paradox is at the core of all truth. Is that correct?" "Well," the professor answered, "yes and no." If you think you have discovered a great truth, and it is not a paradox, then I suspect you may be deceiving yourself.--------------------------------------------------------------- While Zen was my first spiritual home, after fifteen years I became restless. Stumbling along, to my amazement I gradually discovered in Christianity a world of paradox that had been lying quietly in wait for me. Take the doctrine that Jesus is both human and divine - not 50 percent one and 50 percent the other, but "fully human and fully divine." What could be more paradoxical than that? Or that God resides both inside of us in Her still, small voice and simultaneously outside of us in all of His transcendent otherness? Or that salvation is the result of a mysterious mixture of both grace and works for which we will never have a mathematical formula? The there were the words of Jesus himself: "Whoever will find his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Or: "You must be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves."
-M. Scott Peck, as excerpted from Golf and The Spirit: Lessons for the Journey

Ben Carlson reminds us of the madness of the mob:Herd behavior comes about because of the fear of missing out, the fear of being in, ignorance, greed and loss aversion. The technical reason is different ever time something gets too far our of whack in the markets, but the real reason never changes — we’re human.

Subtle awareness of the truth of theuniverse should not be regardedas an achievement.To think in terms of achieving it is toplace it outside your own nature.This is erroneous and misleading.Your nature and the integral nature of theuniverse are one and the same:indescribable, buteternally present.Simply open yourself to this.
Verse 24Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
Brian Brown Walker

I stumbled across the Chesterton quote in the post above somewhere in my travels. I liked it. I saved it. Yet, with all things Intertunnel, the question arises, "Is it so? Did he really say that?" Curious, the Oracle Google was consulted. According to Google and according to Dale Ahlquist, in Lecture 18: William Blake, Chesterton wrote:

No pure mystic ever loved mere mystery. The mystic does not bring doubts or riddles: the doubts and riddles exist already. We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapours, these are the daily weather of this world. Whatever else we have grown accustomed to, we have grown accustomed to the unaccountable. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand. The mystic is not the man who makes mysteries but the man who destroys them. The mystic is one who offers an explanation which may be true or false, but which is always comprehensible – by which I mean, not that it is always comprehended, but that it always can be comprehended, because there is always something to comprehend. The man whose meaning remains mysterious fails, I think, as a mystic.Good enough for me.

"Make a habit of practicing meditation, and do not let your mind be distracted. In this way you will come finally to the Lord, who is the light-giver, the highest of the high."-The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita

1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. -Psalm 1: 1-3The Holy Bible, King James Version

There are currently an estimated 70 million empty high rise apartment units in China, for example, because under the baleful influence of unlimited credit these apartments were built for asset appreciation, not occupancy.-David Stockman, as excerpted from here